Welcome!

They say it is darkest just before dawn. I remember a camping trip with some high school buddies on the Appalachian Trail. A hot-blooded youth, I didn’t bring a sleeping bag and thought I’d be just fine under the stars in my flannel shirt and jeans. All night long I could hear the gentle snores of my friends while I shivered under those cold stars. How long would the night last? Finally, when I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore, when it was darkest and coldest, a light began to break in the east. Hope began seeping back into my frozen heart. I would survive after all.

Coming down this morning from our early morning prayers, I glanced at the morning paper as the others went over for Mass. The paper was dark and fearful, oppressed with drama and discord, and I wondered if I should read that paper any longer.

As I had an hour free, I rode out to my favorite bench at Golden Gate Park to get some light and air. The sun had just cleared the eastern horizon and the redoubtable Chinese were doing their morning exercises in the park. I prayed the Office of Readings for the Solemnity of the Annunciation as birdsong filled the air and tiny creatures poked about in the blooming azaleas on my little hilltop. An elderly Chinese couple came puffing up the stairs past my bench, each calling out a joyful “hallo” as they skated back down the hill, all smiles.

It was the Solemnity of the Annunciation. An angel announced the dawn of God’s love to a maiden of Nazareth. She was the first to hear that the darkness was coming to an end. In the 2000 years since that announcement, the world had gone through periods of darkness and light. It seems to be undergoing a period of darkness just now, but light and joy are just as far as a hilltop in the park, or a quiet spot in the church, or a heartfelt moment with another person. “May we,” as the prayer for the Solemnity articulates, “who confess our Redeemer to be God and man, merit to become partakers even in his divine nature.”

All of the Christian faith is built on the fact of Christ’s death. The principle sign of Christianity—the cross—is the sign of death. But it is the sign of a sacrificial death, a life-giving death. That’s the kind of death I want to die.Unless a grain of wheat dies, it remains just a dried-up, useless seed. But if it goes into the ground and returns to the soil from which it came, it becomes a new living, life-giving plant. “Where I am there also is my servant,” Jesus says in today’s Gospel. When I lie in death, you will lie in death with me, but when I rise from the dead, you will rise with me. Am I ready to die with Him? The only way to rise with him is first to die with Him.It was not any easier for Jesus to die than it is for any man to die. “With loud cries and tears,” as the second reading says, he prayed not to die. “Father, please, let this cup pass from me,” he prayed in the Garden. Hebrews asserts that it was because of his reverence that he was saved. He didn’t just respect God, and he didn’t just show “tolerance” to God. He reverenced him, like we do at Mass. “Tolerance” is the civic virtue our government promotes, but I don’t want to merely tolerate others and be tolerated by them. I want to love and be loved. Respect isn’t even enough for me. I need loving reverence from those I love, and so do you.

In this Mass, when we show reverence for God—in small things, like keeping silence in the church, or genuflecting before the tabernacle, or kneeling at the consecration—we show how much we love Him, and are even ready to die with him. “Tolerance” and “respect” are not enough for us. We need to reverence God and others, and receive reverence in return. This deeper love is not beyond our capacity. Our Lady, God’s blessed mother, will help us to reverence, and even give our lives for God, so that after we die, we will rise with him to heaven.

Today we celebrate Laetare Sunday, because the introit or entrance antiphon for the Mass begins with Laetare Jeruslalem, “rejoice, Jerusalem.” Priest and altar vest themselves in rose-colored vestments today as a reminder that the rose-fingered dawn will break always upon the darkest night, until the final dawn of eternity brings a close to human history. The history of humanity is a tale of sadness, as the first reading from Chronicles describes it: “the people added infidelity to infidelity, and even though Yahweh had compassion on his people … they mocked the messengers of God.” Humanity continues to mock God and his laws, but He will never refuse anyone his love and reconciliation. We must rejoice because God is greater than our infidelities: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” That verse from John 3:16, our Gospel today, gives us hope and joy that in the end God’s truth and love will triumph over our hardness of heart. The mission of the Church is to insist on God’s truth and love, especially in the face of a growing secularism and even mockery of God.

We love and support our archbishop, and all the good people who work in the archdiocese. Every Sunday we pray for Archbishop Cordileone by name in the Eucharistic prayer and in the prayers of the faithful. This is the Sunday when, in addition to our prayers, we offer him a financial gift from the blessings God has bestowed upon us. This is the Sunday when we share in his work of bringing God’s love and truth to the people of San Francisco.

Our gifts help fund needy parishes and schools, youth ministry and marriage programs, Respect Life and ethnic outreaches to Spanish-speaking, Filipino, and Chinese people. We help fund our archdiocesan newspapers and websites, train seminarians, and send priests for further studies, and many other services to our community. But most of all, our gifts simply send a word of support to a heroic archbishop that we are behind him in his irreplaceable ministry. The greatest service the archbishop renders our community is to ensure that the Holy Mass is offered on 95 altars every day in San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin counties. Archbishop Cordileone is the Vicar of Christ in this archdiocese, and his very presence gives us cause for rejoicing. We have a high priest who will never let us starve for the Bread of Life. Let us give what we can so that the Holy Mass will never be lacking in San Francisco, nor the Mass be lacking in faithful to attend it.

Many thanks to Melissa Lopes for commissioning this portrait of St. Philip Neri, which now hangs in our common room

We are fortunate to have many wise Asian women in our parish. They remind us of what we already know, and recover what we seem to have lost. There are days, and there will be days, when I can’t see how “it” will work. My own frailties, and the overwhelming firepower of the world, knock the wind out of me. I related this state of affairs to a wise and dear Vietnamese friend the other day. You must understand how much the last few generations in Vietnam have suffered, which has endowed their faith with a rare purity and beauty. “Father,” she said, “God is with you. He is with all of us. You have to believe this.” I have to believe that everything God allows will bring about something beautiful. Every single catastrophe is a grace-filled moment of sanctification. “God cannot love you unless he humbles you,” she said. “Only humility can feel God’s touch.”

And so I thought about the humility that comes only through fasting, the kind that strips one to the bone. If I summon the courage, I fast on Friday until after nighttime Stations. And it is when I am empty, hardly strong enough to stand, that I feel God’s touch. To know Him who was stripped, I need to be stripped. Praying the Stations after a satisfying meal is a waste of time. And the most perfect fasting is to take what God gives, and give what he takes, with a big smile. Why the smile? Because I know that in giving what I would never have given, I am finally letting him love me, feeling his love. So, dear children, do not fear the cross. Love the cross, and learn to know God through surrender to it.

Lent: dust to dustForty Days: Jesus spent 40 days in the desert, and we spend 40 days in Lent. We began this holy season of cleansing, sacrifice, and joy five days ago by getting our ashes. On Ash Wednesdays in New York City, where I attended seminary, we would spend all day at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, marking ashes on people’s foreheads. Everyone came: the cabbies and the power brokers, office workers in smart business suits and tennis shoes, news anchors and opera stars from Times Square, street cleaners and Wall Street financiers, homeless folk and the Park Avenue elite. All stood shoulder to shoulder in line, patiently waiting to get a smudge of ashes under the great gothic arches of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. All alike confess the universal truth: I am not perfect, I will die someday, and I need God’s help. Now is the time to turn back to God. I gave a dollar to a homeless man yesterday at a red light on Park Presidio. Homeless people often see life with wonderfully simple clarity. He asked me if I was a reverend. I said, yes, sort of, that I was a Catholic priest. “I’m a Baptist,” he called out, “and I believe in God, because he is my savior.” I looked into his dancing blue eyes as the light turned green. “But don’t get me wrong,” he chuckled as I pulled away. “I backslide from time to time!” There is no one in this church that does not backslide, and God is here to push us back up the slide.TemptationsIn today’s Gospel, our blessed Savior enters the wilderness of our sin and its consequences, a zone of death, to fight for us. It is a wilderness full of beasts and angels, the best and the worst of our human race. Jesus goes into the desert to rescue the beasts and transform them into angels. He is tempted by Satan, as we are tempted, in three ways: First, by pleasure. You are hungry, Satan points out, for this or that satisfaction. You can have that satisfaction just by asking for it; your Father in heaven would not deny you this simple pleasure. With Jesus, we reply: God’s word, and God’s will, is my bread, and my only pleasure. I will discipline my body so my soul can be filled. Keep your Lenten fast—the spiritual riches you will receive are worth the price. The Second Temptation is to having it my way. Throw yourself down—you have a right to do what you want, and someone will catch you. I saw a skateboarder the other day flying down the hill on Geary right through traffic—no brakes, completely unprotected—almost like a death wish. It was a sheer assertion of his will to do what he wants with his life. And we say in reply: my life is not my own, but I am a steward of the gift God has given me. Give alms, for in giving your life to God and others rather than throwing it away on your own will, you entrust it to God, who will keep it safe for you. And finally the third temptation, to power. By bending a knee to Satan, Jesus could have unlimited worldly power. By bending a knee to this culture, we could gain mastery over a dimension of it. But God calls us not to conform, but to reform, to go against the tide rather than assimilate to this world. The world, anyway, is passing away. SO in Lent we pray more and more deeply. We pray to God, not to Satan, and we dedicate ourselves to disciplined prayer.Parish MissionOur Parish Mission next week will focus on Our Lady, Ark of the Covenant, and Jesus, the divine presence in that Ark. He is always within her. The closer we draw to Mary, the closer we draw to Jesus inside of her. There is no authentic devotion or life in Christ that ignores or disowns his Mother Mary.Msgr. Arthur Calkins, a Vatican expert on Our Blessed Mother, will preach Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights at 7pm. We will expose the Blessed Sacrament after his talk, and conclude with benediction. A priest will be in the confessional during adoration. There is wonderful grace in simply coming to a mission, because it is God’s will that we do this during Lent. I hope you can come. Let us pray to Our Lady now in the words of Mother Teresa:

Mary, Mother of Jesus, give me your heart, so beautiful, so pure, so immaculate, so full of love and humility,that I may be able to receive Jesus in the Bread of Life, love Him as you loved Him, and serve Him in the distressing disguise of the poorest of the poor.

Yesterday we all received a black mark on our foreheads. When I was a kid (only one of two Catholics in my class), I wore that sign of the cross traced in black ashes with pride—too much pride, I’m sure. In the early years of our Church’s history, the sign of the cross was misunderstood, even a sign of shame. Sometimes today, too, the Sign of the Cross is misunderstood by some.

Imagine a Catholic who attends a morning Ash Wednesday Mass, then dashes off to work at a high-powered office in the financial district or a chic clothing store on Union Square. This sign of our faith will be misunderstood by some, and even as we witness to our belief in Jesus we must do so with patient charity, as some will not want to see our faith publicly displayed. Let us wear that sign nevertheless and hope that many will come to a better understanding of our faith.In years past the newspapers would always send a reporter and cameraman to my parish for a story on Ash Wednesday and the Christian practice of Lent. After all, the majority of people in this country practice the Christian faith, so Lent is certainly a newsworthy item. But in recent years, Ash Wednesday has become less of a story. I kind of miss those nice reporters and the festive atmosphere they brought with their colorful stories about Lenten practices. Imagine my delight when CBS, NBC, ABC, the Chronicle, and even the Examiner showed up last Wednesday. They expected to do a somewhat negative story on our parish, but every child, every adult they interviewed proclaimed the faith by the Sign of the Cross in ashes on their forehead! I had a lovely time talking to reporters again, and we all got our news story on Lent. God knows what He is doing!

With this Mass, we have entered into Holy Week. No time compares with these eight days that have forever changed human history, and continue to change it. Palm Sunday is the only Mass with two colors, and two Gospels. The liturgy begins with jubilant green palm branches as Christ triumphantly enters His City; it ends in red as he is executed five days later, with his blood soaking the ground beneath the cross. He took the city like no commander or emperor has ever taken a city. He took it without shedding the enemy’s blood, seated on an ass, the foal of a colt, in perfect humility. The city would demand blood, but it would be only his own. No one took it from him; He freely gave it to save the city, as he does at each Mass. Christ begins the great labor of redemption this day, and will accomplish it in seven days. As God accomplished the great labor of creating the world in “seven days,” so will He accomplish the great work of recreating it in seven days. He fixed his eyes on the will of God to accomplish this work: “I have set my face like flint, knowing that I shall not be put to shame.” Christ sets himself to the task, and we must do the same. God has appointed to each of us some great task, a “city” that we each must take as Christ took Jerusalem. It will be our vocation to enter this city and make it our own: a marriage, a career, some great sacrifice for another, some titanic suffering we must undergo. The time comes for every man to “set his face like flint,” heedless of either praise or mockery, in order to accomplish the work God has set before him. In this Holy Week, we accompany Jesus Christ in defeat and triumph, in order to prepare for our own. To win, we must first lose, but our initial loss will not defeat us if we keep our eyes fixed on Christ. “Let us go,” as Philip said in last Sunday’s Gospel, “to die with him.”

The towering Sunday readings of Lent We have reached the Fifth Sunday of Lent, with the towering story of Lazarus, having seen the Readings wax longer and richer as we move towards Easter. We will hear the longest Gospel of the year next Sunday (the entire Passion narrative), and finally, a week after that, nine lengthy readings cover the whole sweep of salvation history at the Easter Vigil. All of these readings, however, conclude with a very short Gospel on Easter Sunday: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He has been raised up.” Astute homilists preach shorter sermons as the readings grow longer, and I pray that I am growing more astute with age.Haunted by death The raising of Lazarus is a drama second only to the Passion itself. It is story haunted by death’s spectral and putrid visage that, however, does not end in death. Jesus actually plays a cat and mouse game with death—giving it some brief play, but then yanking it back. Not only does he say, in the end, “death, where is thy sting,” but he says “thou, death, wilt serve me.” And death, indeed, serves the glory of God in the sickness, death, and resurrection of Lazarus.Where were you? A few brief points from this long tale. First, messengers tell Jesus that Lazarus (“the one you love”) is dying. We commonly say that death and taxes are life’s only absolutes—tax day is next week, by the way—but Jesus says that death is not absolute. He describes Lazarus’ death as “sleeping.” “Lazarus is dead … but I am going to awaken him.” Love can undo death. This great truth is somehow told in many fairy tales, as in the prince’s kiss awakening the dead princess from her “sleep.” By his death, Christ has become the true prince of this world, able to awaken all who are dead by his divine kiss. Jesus gets to Bethany “four days late,” at least in the mind of the dead man’s sisters. Both reproach him in exactly the same words: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” These sisters are deeply upset, or at least confused, about Jesus. Where were you when we needed you? You said that you had come that they might have life; that he who eats your bread will never die; that he who drinks your water would have a spring of life-giving water within him. What about all these promises now? My brother, the one you love, is dead. All of these reproaches Jesus receives calmly, and simply says, I AM the resurrection and the life. Shall I prove it to you?Jesus wept And then Jesus himself weeps in the face of death. Have you ever seen a grown man cry? I saw a dear friend cry recently at his mother’s funeral Mass. Manly tears makes you love him faces death’s might manfully. Jesus’ soul is deeply troubled, he trembles and shakes with repulsion at the stench of death. Christ will raise this man, but it will cost him. With loud cry, like that from the Cross, “eloi eloi lema sabachtani,” Jesus calls the dead man out. “Untie him, and let him go.” By my death, I have come to untie you from the bondage of death. You will all die, but you will rise stronger, more beautiful, and sinless. Belief in Life Death has never been absolute. There is only one absolute, and that absolute is a person, a person who is love. All things, St. Paul writes, especially suffering and death, work for the good for those who love God. We must imitate Christ, who shakes and weeps at the stench of his friend’s death, and yet believes in Someone stronger than death. This story begins with the question of belief (“I am glad I was not there that you may believe”), it centers on belief (“Martha, do you believe this?”), and it ends in belief (“those who saw this sign began to believe in him”). Suffering does not hurt us. Death does not hurt us. Only unbelief hurts us. Suffering and death must strengthen your faith, that you may not fear, but rather believe in the Resurrection and the Life, Jesus Christ our Lord.

The rebuilt Christ the Savior Cathedral, Moscow, with St. Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin in the foreground

Mother Teresa and Soviet Atheism Today the Church celebrates Laetare Sunday, named for the first word in the introit or entrance antiphon: Laetare Ierusalem. Rejoice, O City of men, for God is within you! Our Gospel story is of a man born blind (born in Original Sin) who washes in the pool of Siloam (the pool of “the One Sent”). Only baptism in Christ Jesus heals the man who gropes in the darkness of a world without God. Let’s go to Soviet Russia to see what a city without God would look like. In 1917, Vladimir Lenin and his poor blind Bolsheviks attempted to annihilate any trace of God in their grand social experiment. In 1931, for example, Stalin dynamited the largest Orthodox church ever built, Moscow’s cathedral of Christ the Savior. He began work on a colossal statue of Lenin that would stand in its place. Every single Catholic parish in Russia was destroyed, or converted into warehouses or sports clubs. A great darkness closed in. The Soviet Union, they said, was impenetrable to the Gospel. Somehow, though, decades before religion was legal again in Russia, Mother Teresa and her sisters slipped into Moscow. She tells this story from those days before 1989: “One doctor in charge of a very big hospital accepted us, and we came there and he gave us three rooms. And we began the work in that place by cleaning the toilets—that was our first apostolic work. …We had a little tabernacle, we had Holy Mass, and the priest gave us Jesus and he changed the whole attitude—the whole place looked quite different after. …After one week, the doctor came to me and said, “Mother Teresa, what’s happening in my hospital?” I said, “I don’t know, doctor, what, what is happening?” He said, “I don’t know, something is happening. I see the nurses and the doctors much more kind, much more loving with the patients. I see the patients are not screaming with pain as before. What’s happening? What are the sisters doing?” And I looked at him and I said, “Doctor, you know what is happening? Jesus is in this house now. There in that little chapel. He is living, He is loving, He is there, He’s the cause, He’s the giver of this joy, of this peace, of this love.” And he just shook his head, “Thank you.” And it was wonderful to feel that Presence of Jesus in that hospital after seventy years.” American Atheism Our government has not waged a frontal war on God like the Soviets. American atheism is a personal choice, and all of us have chosen it to some degree. Our lives are growing darker as we go about our daily lives ignoring God’s laws. Take the odd phenomena of Road Rage, for example. It is barbaric, but what causes it? Well, consider what most folks listen to in their cars, some for hours on end. It’s usually rap or rock music, or news, or talk shows, that only stir up anger, fear, and discouragement because it ignores even the idea of God, and often ridicules those who believe in God. People used to have bumper stickers: “God is my co-pilot.” But rarely now do we imagine God co-piloting our cars, or our lives. Our freeways have become darker, less-friendly, more dangerous places. So have our schools, our neighborhoods, and our politics. In 1863, President Lincoln spoke to a nation that was, in his words, “faced with a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity.” Are we not engaged today in a cultural civil war of “unequaled magnitude?” Lincoln begged the American people to “fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes.” The President of the United States urged Americans to return to God’s will. All the newspapers affirmed his prophetic utterance. Can you imagine any news media, liberal or conservative, urging us to trust in God’s will and His laws today? Hope And yet: there is good reason for hope. We know how bright life can be when we order our lives for God through regular prayer and the exercise of charity. We can throw Jesus out of our cities, but we can also welcome Him back. We can bathe in the waters of His grace, as he instructed the Blind Man: “Go, wash in the waters of Siloam.” We Catholics have three treasures that keep God’s light brightly burning in our cities: Mass, confession, and the rosary. At TAC we get good marks on Mass and confessions, but there is the third treasure, the rosary. Do not underestimate the practice of the rosary. “The rosary,” wrote Blessed John Paul II in 2002, "is my favorite prayer. A marvelous prayer! Marvelous in its simplicity and its depth.” All of us can pray the rosary daily, or at least a decade daily. Our country needs what only we Catholics can give: The Eucharist, sacramental Penance, and daily consecration to the Mother of God.Joy The good people of Russia have rebuilt the cathedral Stalin dynamited in 1931. The colossal statue of Lenin was never erected. Jesus Christ has won the war, even though the battle for individual souls, and the souls of nations, rages on. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus asked the blind man. “Yes, Lord, I do believe,” and he worshipped Him. For each of us, light and joy flood our lives when we echo that blind man’s faith, when we come back to right worship, ortho-doxy. Yes, Lord, I do believe. I worship, not myself or any other, but You alone.

A Face like the Sun The second Sunday of Lent describes the fourth Luminous Mystery of the Rosary. Jesus climbs Mount Tabor to pray, and while he is praying, is transfigured before Peter, James, and John. I think this detail in the Gospel is most important. Prayer transfigures Jesus, at least in the eyes of his friends, and his immaculate nature is thus revealed. “This is my beloved Son,” a voice booms from within the cloud. This is my Son, the all-pure, whose face shines like the sun at midday, and whose vesture gleams white as light. There is no shadow or hint of darkness in Him. Listen to Him; imitate Him, become Him. Your Sanctification In the Epistle, St. Paul pleads with his beloved Christians at Thessalonica to imitate this immaculate whiteness of Christ. As a father, as a mother, he earnestly urges them, in the Lord Jesus, “to refrain from immorality and lust…. God has not called us to impurity but to holiness.” He does so as a mother would speak with her daughter, or a father his son, about the delicate and burning issue of purity. “Conduct yourselves in a way pleasing to God… this is the will of God—your sanctification.” Paul defines “sanctification,” in this passage, as sexual purity. Of course there is much more to holiness than chastity, but sanctification is not possible when one degrades himself in the flesh. We get pretty good marks on purity here at TAC in comparison with Paul’s “gentiles.” “Conduct yourselves,” he says, “so as to please God, as you are already doing,” but I exhort you to do so even more. We too could be more Christ-like, more god-like in our purity. We could imitate the blazing and mighty purity of the Son of God.My Beloved Son How do we imitate the purity of Christ Jesus? It is in prayer that we perceive God’s love, and so are strengthened against loveless lust. While in prayer, Christ’s face blazed like the sun and his clothes shone white as light. He spoke with the glorified figures of Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets. Jesus reveals himself in complete majesty, a majesty of immaculate purity. His brightness manifests a quality of glorified bodies, “who will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt 13:43). But faith comes more through hearing than through seeing. And so the Father’s voice commands them to “Listen” to his beloved Son. But how many are listening?Is anyone listening? It certainly seems like most people are not listening, and so they fall into gross impurity, an impurity that incapacitates authentic love. Last week I bought a smoothie at a little shop, and the girl at the counter seemed so empty, so debilitated. She didn’t smile, didn’t look at me, spoke in a monotone, and made my smoothie with zombielike movements. I went outside to drink my smoothie and a car dropped off a young woman in a uniform who sat at the next table to await her shift. She too was a zombie: glassy eyes, wooden movements. Behold the casualties of the so-called “sexual revolution.” When I see that kind of emptiness in a young person’s face, I know the cause. They do not know love, they do not know themselves, because they are living a lie in their bodies. They do not see the image of God in the human person, and they will eventually destroy that image—even babies—without a thought, because they have not listened to God’s voice. We too, even in our vigorous Catholicism, violate holy purity at times in what we watch at the movie theatre, on TV and computers and cell phones. We promote poisonous impurity in how we dress, in the music we listen to, and in how we look at others. The Father’s voice begs us, commands us: Listen to my beloved Son. Do not listen to the world! It is aggressive, demanding, and intolerant. It shouts at you, demands your submission, and soaks you in impurity. If we want to be capable of love, we must listen carefully to God by praying early and often. In the silence of the heart God speaks; only in silence can love speak to us. May Our Lady, the Immaculata, show us how to see Christ in others, and love Him in others in all purity and sanctity.